A collection of articles discussing the philosophy and practice of the spiritual teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana, written by Michael James and forming an extension of his main website, www.happinessofbeing.com.

In chapter 4, 'The Nature of Reality', I do not expect to incorporate any large additions, but I will incorporate the following four small additions.

On page 219 of the present e-book version, I have added two sentences in the middle of the first paragraph, and after these sentences I have split the paragraph into two as follows:

When we wake up from sleep, we think that we were unconscious in sleep, but we did not actually know or experience complete unconsciousness in that state. What we actually experienced in sleep was merely the absence of any knowledge or consciousness of anything other than ourself. When we say, "I know that I was unconscious in sleep", we are describing our actual experience in sleep, but we are doing so in very loose terms, because we have not reflected deeply about what we actually experienced at that time, or what exactly we mean by the term 'unconscious'. In order to know that we were unconscious in sleep, we must have been conscious of that seeming 'unconsciousness'. That is, we were able to experience the relative 'unconsciousness' of sleep only because we were actually conscious at that time.

When we say, "I was unconscious", we do not mean that we were absolutely unconscious, but only that we were unconscious of our body, the world and all the other things that we are accustomed to knowing in our waking and dream states. Our 'unconsciousness' or lack of objective knowledge in sleep is relative only to our objective knowledge in waking and dream. The absence of all objective knowledge in sleep, which is what we mean to describe when we say, "I was unconscious", is not merely inferred by our mind, but was actually experienced by us in sleep.

I have amended and split the paragraph that begins on the bottom of page 240 and ends on the top of page 241 of the present e-book version, and after it I have added a new paragraph as follows:

In each state of dualistic experience — that is, in each of the many dreams that we experience, of which our present waking state is just one — we become a person, who is an intimate part of that dualistic state, and who is therefore entirely caught up in the seeming reality of everything that he or she experiences in that state. Since everything that we experience in any state of duality is a product of our own imagination, the imaginary person that we mistake ourself to be whenever we experience such a state is no more real than any of the other imaginary people and things that we experience in that state.

The only thing about this imaginary person that distinguishes him or her from all the other imaginary people in that state is that our experience of this imaginary person is mixed and confused with our consciousness 'I am', and therefore we feel 'I am this person who is experiencing all this'. Because we thus imagine ourself to be this experiencing person, who is a part of the world that we are experiencing in that state, we become entangled and ensnared in the seeming reality of all that we are then experiencing.

That is, because we confuse our essential consciousness 'I am' with this imaginary person, who seems to be experiencing the current state, we mistake him or her to be real. And because we thus attribute reality to this experiencing person, we thereby attribute the same degree of reality to all that he or she is experiencing. Therefore, though everything that we experience is just as real as this experiencing person, whom we imagine to be ourself, everything that we experience actually derives its seeming reality only from this experiencing person, who in turn derives his or her seeming reality only from our own essential self-consciousness 'I am'.

After the last paragraph on page 244 of the present e-book version, I have added the following new paragraphs:

As Sri Ramana says in the seventh paragraph of Nan Yar?, which we discussed in the previous chapter:

That which actually exists is only atma-svarupa [our own real self]. The world, soul and God are imaginations [or fabrications] in it [our real self], like [the imaginary] silver [that we see] in a shell. These three [basic elements of relativity or duality] appear at the same time and disappear at the same time. [Our] svarupa [our 'own form' or real self] alone is the world; [our] svarupa alone is 'I' [our mind or individual self]; [our] svarupa alone is God; everything is siva-svarupa [our own real self, which is siva, the absolute and only truly existing reality].

Therefore, though God as a separate entity is only a figment of our own imagination, he is nevertheless as real as this world, and also as real as our mind, which imagines him to be separate from itself. So long as we experience our mind as if it were real, we cannot deny the relative reality of God. Since he is the infinitely subtle power that regulates everything that we experience in this or any other world, he is as real as anything else that we experience.

I have split the paragraph that begins on the bottom of page 258 and ends on the top of page 259 of the present e-book version, and have added a new sentence at the end as follows:

Some scholastic philosophers describe absolute reality and relative reality as being different 'levels' or 'planes' of reality. However, absolute reality and relative reality cannot be compared in this manner. The absolute reality is absolutely real, so it is relative to nothing, and therefore cannot be compared in any way to anything else.

However, from the limited and distorted perspective of relative reality, we have to say that the absolute reality is the ultimate foundation, substratum or support of all this relative reality. Therefore, though the absolute reality is not related in any way to relative reality, relative reality is intimately, intrinsically and unavoidably related to the absolute reality, because it is entirely dependent upon it. That is, all relativity depends for its own seeming reality upon the true reality of the one absolute essence, which is our own self-conscious being or 'am'-ness, whereas this absolute essence does not depend upon anything else.

I have written more than a dozen pages of additional material to incorporate at various places in chapter 5, 'What is True Knowledge?', and I will post these here over the next few days.

No comments:

Articles Discussing the Philosophy and Practice of the Spiritual Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana

Bhagavan Sri Ramana

About This Blog

Welcome to this blog, which is an extension of my main website, Happiness of Being, and which is dedicated to discussing the philosophy and practice of the spiritual teachings of our sadguru, Bhagavan Sri Ramana.

This blog is a growing archive of articles that I have written from time to time containing my translations of verses and other passages from the writings of Sri Ramana and his closest disciples, particularly Sri Muruganar and Sri Sadhu Om, my recordings of some of the explanations that I heard from Sri Sadhu Om, and my own musings about the philosophy, science and art of true self-knowledge as taught by Sri Ramana.

All the articles in this blog are also clearly indexed in two sections further down in this left margin, firstly according to date in reverse chronological order under the heading Article Archive, and secondly in greater detail according to subject arranged alphabetically under the heading Index of Topics.

Search this blog

The search box at the top left-hand corner of this page will only search for words in the articles, not in the comments, so if you want to search this entire blog, including the comments, you can use the following search box, which will do a Google search and return all the results in a separate tab:

Guidelines for Comments

Though I would prefer to keep this blog as a free and open forum for discussing Bhagavan’s teachings, during recent months the comments on each article have been increasingly dominated by trolls and others making ad hominem attacks rather than engaging in serious and reasonable discussions of his teachings, thereby deterring others who may wish to engage in (or just read) such discussions, so as of today, 1st December 2018, I have reluctantly decided to introduce comment moderation, and hence no comments will be posted until I have had time to read and approve them.

All comments are welcome provided that they are relevant to Bhagavan’s teachings and do not contain personal criticism or abuse. Since we do not all understand his teachings in exactly the same way, any open discussion of them will naturally involve disagreement, but any disagreement should be expressed in a polite, respectful and reasonable manner. By all means criticise ideas that you disagree with, but please explain clearly why you disagree with them and do not allow your criticism to deteriorate into an attack on the supposed character, motive or other qualities of any person who expressed them.

If you disagree with anything I have written, please do not hesitate to say why you disagree with me and, if you so choose, to ask for further clarification. I do not have time to answer all such comments (or most of the emails I receive), but if I think it is a sufficiently important point I will try to find time to answer it (though if I do not answer any point you have raised please do not assume that I consider it to be unimportant, since so many important points are raised that I do not have time to reply to all of them individually).

Since I will not be able to moderate all comments as and when they are submitted, please bear with me until I have time to read and approve whatever you may have submitted, and do not be disappointed if sometimes you have to wait more than a day or so before your comment is posted.

Recent Comments

Feed Subscription Links

If you would like to be updated whenever any new article or comment is posted on this blog, you can right-click on either or both of the links below, select ‘Copy link address’ or an equivalent option, and then paste the address (URL) into your feed reader:

If you do not already use a feed reader, and if your browser is Google Chrome, you can install the following extension to it: RSS Feed Reader for Chrome. This will add an icon to the toolbar of your browser, which you can click on to add either or both the feed URLs above, and then whenever a new article or comment is posted here, at the bottom corner of the icon a number will display or the existing number will increment.

Sri Ramana Teachings on Facebook

An alternative way to be updated whenever any new article or comment by Michael is posted on this blog is to visit Sri Ramana Teachings, a public Facebook page where links to them or copies of them will be posted, and if you have a Facebook account you can like it and choose to receive notifications.

Several new videos are uploaded to this channel each month, and one of the latest is one that was taken during a meeting of the Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK on 8th September 2018:

If you would like to be notified by YouTube via email whenever any new video is added to this channel, you can subscribe to it either by clicking on Subscribe to Sri Ramana Teachings or by visiting Sri Ramana Teachings and clicking on the ‘Subscribe’ button that you will see in the upper right-hand corner just under the banner showing Arunachala hill.

Audio copies of most of these videos are available on MediaFire in a folder called Discussions with Michael James, where they can either be listened to online or downloaded as MP3 files.

Support this blog

If you would like to support me to continue writing for this blog and doing other related work, you may contribute to my living expenses by clicking on this button:

Until December 2015 I was able to carrying on writing this blog without needing to accept any of the kind offers of financial support that I received from friends and well-wishers, but I eventually reached a point where I seemed to have no option but to accept whatever support may be offered. Writing articles for this blog and replying to comments and emails asking questions about Bhagavan’s teachings is my full-time occupation (and one that I do solely for the love of this subject), so I have no other job and I receive only a small pension and some royalties from my book sales, which amount to far less than I need for rent, food and other essential expenses, so any financial help that any of you may be able to offer would be much appreciated.

However, I would like to emphasise that this blog and whatever else I write about Bhagavan’s teachings is still intended to be an entirely free service, because I believe his teachings are too valuable to be sold and should not be used for financial gain, so any contributions to me should be entirely voluntary and no one should feel any compulsion to contribute. I am sure that most of you have your own financial difficulties and constraints, because having given us the true wealth of his teachings, Bhagavan generally does not bestow material wealth on those of us who aspire to follow the path he has shown us, and because he has made us understand that money and material gain are not the aim or purpose of our life. Therefore please do not try to contribute anything more than you can comfortably afford, and if you are unable to contribute anything, please do not feel bad about it, because ultimately it is up to Bhagavan to decide how (or if) he wants to provide for my material needs, and I am sure he will take care of me in one way or another (whether or not I like the way he chooses).